Professionalism and dignity: branding and web design for an immigration law firm with a global audience

Designing for trust across borders

One of my great fascinations in business is discovering a firm that is at a turning point. This is the story of just such a business, Barella Global, a highly successful immigration law practice.

Founded as Barella Law in 2013 in Miami, the firm relocated and rebranded five years later, setting up with a London/Brussels axis. Now, well established, the firm decided to rethink how they looked.

Much like the previous turning points the firm embraced, this major change reboots Barella Global in terms of identity, clarity of offering and most importantly, customer perception. Here’s how it happened.

The brief:
Professionalism, empathy and global reach

Why this project mattered

From our first conversations, founder Kyle Barella was clear that he was ready for a complete change. There was a sense that, given the home-made origins of both his branding and website, he was open, as he put it in our initial meeting, “to an evolution… or something else completely.” An open brief is always a pleasure, but also inevitably presents quite the combination of creative freedom with responsibility to hit the right markers for their client base.

The structure and expertise of the firm also presents an interesting dichotomy. They offer a highly tailored, personal service while working in offices in major cities in Europe and the US. With this in mind, Kyle was clear from the beginning that he wanted Barella Global to be presented as a boutique firm paired with the professionalism of a global practice.

This mix of concepts: boutique yet professional; personal yet international, provided the basis and background for this law firm branding design project we’ve now completed.

Defining the brand: tone, trust and visual authority

Shaping a brand that reflects legal excellence and human understanding

I’ve always loved those logos that you see on huge 18-wheeler trucks on the Pacific Coast Highway in California. They speak to decades of experience and dedication, while echoing a simpler era before digital design. Often created in the early 1970s, their iconography is thoughtful, occasionally witty but always memorable.

Given the background and expertise of the firm, there was an incredible opportunity to tilt at concepts and design principles of classic Americana. In our early conversations with Kyle, I showed him a series of classic identities of this kind, pairing a sense of minimal flat design that conveyed authority and confidence. He was immediately clear that this sort of design direction was the departure he was looking for. Much like the combination of concepts I mentioned earlier, this sense of clarity evokes the precise yet even-handed approach to business that is Barella Global’s hallmark.

The finished logo comprises what I call ‘combination iconography’. Three smooth, soft-edged rectangles combine to create a ‘B’ that is intended as initial and a set of steps. These are stages of a process as well as evoking progress and onward movement. They are combined with Zeist, a typeface by Luzi, a Swiss type foundry, that we then went on to apply throughout the site.

My favourite part? The beautiful, subtle vector animation we added to the logo as you arrive at the site (and reach the footer). We love these small moments that bring a logo to life and the surprise and delight they bring to visitors of the site.

The website: branding and web design for an immigration law firm in action

Designing an experience that works across borders and devices

The Barella Global website stands apart from our other law firm web design work in that it is fundamentally service-led, covering a great deal of often highly complex information. Alongside a wide range of visa codes, the pages need to make clear who the visa is for. Then within each, there is detailed information and background to each visa or service.

What was fundamental to the success of this project was that the page structure had to be incredibly minimal, with an ease of use offering an ability to at all times see your route through the site. The navigation also needed to adopt a completely fresh approach, using a single deep dropdown system that offered a complete set of pages at once. These included over thirty service pages that have been set out in a way that feels clear and immediate, rather than overwhelming or confusing.

In addition to these service pages, the site also has an extensive Insights section, including dozens of posts Kyle has been writing about immigration law, going back many years. Our technical build process included writing a script to import all of these from his previous website, despite it being on a different platform. With this completed, we then handed over to Kyle and his team to review content throughout and update, well ahead of the launch.

Design details: precision without pretence

How typography, layout and imagery shaped the user experience

Our instinct from the start was that the pages of the Barella Global site needed to feel authoritative and functional. We chose to evoke an almost governmental user interface design, paring back to the bare minimum our type hierarchy and avoiding unnecessary design elements. At every stage of the page layout process, we used design to signpost rather than elaborate. We saw the site as an information portal, albeit one that also had to set out a stall of services.

Where we did apply decorative elements, they were used to add relevant texture or visual appeal that helped signpost the levels of the pages within the context of the visa types in particular. Kyle was also keen to add relevant stock images but as he explained, “we will inevitably need to include some visual clichés, but always try and avoid anything corny.” To me it strikes the right balance, however we were keen to go a little further.

Central to our visual research on the project had been an idea that we might find a way of considering the graphic language of the passport. This idea worked particularly well, with both images of the Capitol in Washington DC as well as swirling patterns and textures that are used within page framing and interactive elements. Throughout we applied a rule of only using these to strike the right tone, as guidance for users or to back up the Barella Global brand.

Why should the Barella Global project matter to professional services firms?

All law firms need partnerships, but in our work we try to think a little differently. When it comes to great brand and web design, we look at pairing your intellectual expertise and the ways your firm offers them, usually with a highly tailored approach.

For Barella Global, it was a case of thinking of a practice that is both boutique and professional. Every aspect of the design had to consider the brand as being in service of the content. After all, the results of the visa process have a profound personal impact on the firm’s clients, wherever in the world they reside.

This project is a great example of what thoughtful branding and web design for an immigration law firm can achieve. The central end result for the management of Barella Global is a significantly improved brand presence, creating a completely fresh starting point for a well-established firm. We wanted to make maintaining the site day-to-day significantly easier, meaning adding sections or new insights is simple, immediate and impactful. In essence, it’s the result of another great partnership: an enthusiastic client and a design team looking for the best end result, for everyone involved, both behind and in front of the desk.

Are you looking for branding and web design for an immigration law firm or international legal practice?

If your firm is rethinking how it shows up, whether for clients, recruits, or global markets, we’d love to help.

Call us on +44 20 7351 4083 or email us direct to start the conversation.

Find out more

Visit the Barella Global website

Our portfolio page about the project

More of our branding design work for law firms

More of our web design work for law firms